


Thank you for introducing me to me

by Emilys_List



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Angst, Documentary, F/M, Gen, Interviews, Producers, The Office: An American Workplace, soul searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-05
Updated: 2008-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilys_List/pseuds/Emilys_List
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the documentary airs, a follow-up special is planned.  Pam is interviewed one afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank you for introducing me to me

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any characters that you recognize. They belong to Mssrs. Gervais, Merchant, and Daniels, and all associated corporations. No copyright infringement is intended.  
> 

She held her cup of tea, warming her hands, as they set up the equipment. It was a skeleton crew – cameraman (although in this case, camerawoman), boom mic operator and producer. Ken’s was the only face she recognized and it was nice to see him.  
  
“Okay, Pam, take a seat! We’re all set.”  
  
It was strange for someone to offer her a seat in her own home, but she smiled, nodding, and did as directed. They sat across from each other, and for a moment, Ken stared at her. “Hi,” he said.  
  
“You shaved your beard,” she noted.  
  
One hand rubbed at the blank canvass of his face. “I did, awhile back. It was a big change. Thanks for noticing, though, and trying to stall.” Caught. “Okay, this is totally familiar for you. Answer honestly, truthfully, and frame your answers with my question or give an answer in which the question is implicit. Relax. And let’s have fun, okay?”  
  
She wanted to tell him it was torturous, but she liked Ken and gave him a big smile. He gestured to the camera operator, who’d been introduced earlier as Sarafina, and Pam was staring back at that little red light. She gulped, probably paling quickly. Nothing fun about this.  
  
“Pam, what have you been up to since the documentary ended?”  
  
She dragged one hand through her short curls and nodded. “Since the documentary stopped filming,” she emphasized, because her life existed when the camera stopped rolling, “I’ve been… pretty busy. I received my MFA in new forms and started teaching – but it wasn’t a fit. And I decided my palette had always been too limited, so I saved up and traveled.” She smiled to herself.  
  
“Where did you go?”  
  
She looked out the window. “Oh, everywhere. I backpacked.” She realized she’d forgotten the formula and she shook her head. “I traveled everywhere, backpacking the whole time, and while I had days of feeling too old, it’s the best thing I’ve done, by far… but where did I go. Right. I started in Europe and went to England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, uh, I’m forgetting – oh – and Toby’s favorite, the Netherlands.  
  
“Speaking of Toby, I visited him in Costa Rica. I had a nice time there. I learned to surf! Toby taught me. I also went to Chile and Argentina, and Uruguay. Chile is where I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. I was totally prepared, I went in the morning with a sweatshirt and stayed all day, sketching.” From her window, she could see the same ocean and it was soothing and calming. “I was a way for almost a year.”  
  
“That’s a long time. I don’t know the timing, but does this mean you missed the first airing of ‘The Office: An American Workplace?’”  
  
He knew the timing, he had to. She took a sip of her tea. “Yes, I missed the entire airing. But it wasn’t intentional.” It had been. Ken arched an eyebrow. “I watched it all on DVD, though, not too long ago. It is very strange to see eight years distilled into 13 hours.”  
  
“That’s 13 hours of footage. That’s more than standard for a documentary.”  
  
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I thought it was long, and very thorough, but it was eight years of my life that became viewable in half a day. There was so much I felt was missing.” Ken motioned for her to continue, elaborate. “Like, all the times that Karen and I went to lunch, or all of the fun Jim and I had when he was back from Stamford. Sure – neither situation was an everyday occurrence, but watching it was like re-watching my life with large chunks missing.”  
  
He drummed on his clipboard. “We were trying to tell a story.”  
  
She nodded. “I’m not trying to be difficult, I understand how it works. But my story wasn’t told.”  
  
Ken cocked his head to the side. “So what’s your story?”  
  
“My story? I think – well – I don’t know, really, what my story is. I was, I am, someone who’s living her life and trying to make good choices. The producers chose to portray me in terms of my relationships, but I’m more than Roy’s ex-fiancée.”  
  
“Or Jim’s wife.” She winced, realized she’d walked right into it. “When the documentary aired, you and Jim were having some problems, and what became of you two wasn’t known.”  
  
She gritted her teeth in a smile substitute. “Yeah. How about that.”  
  
Sarafina and the boom guy, Hideki, exchanged a look. “I take it you don’t want to talk about it,” Ken commented, his voice soft, and she relented a little.  
  
“Jim and I divorced several years ago. It had been… really hard for a long time. And then harder, and… that’s what she said?” Hideki tried to hide a smile. “No, uh, it just stopped working. So I went on a long trip, hoping to clear my head, and when I came home, I think we were both clear-headed.”  
  
“To clarify, you went on a trip around the world when you were still married?”  
  
They had been all but separated. If she thought hard enough, she could see their tearful but grateful farewell at the Philadelphia airport, bound for her first stop at the Grand Canyon. They had grown apart before she’d even left, and the break was made clean when she arrived home. She bit her lip, working out an acceptable answer in her head before finally saying, “The trip was important for me, I think, because I needed a change, you know? I needed an adventure.”  
  
She paused thoughtfully, weighing her words. “And I had thought I’d find out about myself in the course of my day-to-day life, and in others, but it took being far away from everything I knew to really – get me? And I was way too old for that kind of soul searching, but I’d never done it… I think I’ve gone off track somewhere,” she said, laughing.  
  
Ken nodded, smiling at her. “I want to go back to something you said a minute ago that we portrayed you in terms of relationships, and while I agree that the editing process may have done that a bit, I think we showed your journey in terms of you. Can you elaborate further?”  
  
In her first interview with Ken, she had given mostly one-word answers – but then somewhere along the line, she’d become verbose and she didn’t know when that had happened, exactly. “Well, when I watched the DVDs, the story of Pam seemed to be about growth, but growth as a means for her to not be with Roy and instead be with Jim. It was hard to watch.” She had lapsed into third person, purposefully, but it still sounded strange. “Not because it was too revealing, but because I used to be more – I used to be that way, to some extent. I didn’t know it, or I didn’t allow myself to know it.”  
  
She stared out the window again, willing herself to be calm, or at least appear it. She missed him everyday, thought about him frequently, but it never hurt because she knew in her heart and in the rest of her that they’d both made the right decision together. It wasn’t something she could quantify – she just knew it. And she didn’t want this to become fodder for fans, to be dissected and analyzed.  
  
In the end, she was a girl who fell in love until she fell out.  
  
“I think the most important thing is that every choice I’ve made, good or bad, has brought me here, and you know, I like who I’ve become. I’m happy. And although Jim and I are no longer together, he remains an important part of who I was and who I am.” Ken’s face had been entirely inquisitive, but it had softened to empathetic at some point. “He’s the one who made me grow up, take chances, and… he pushed me to be better. He loved me in a way that I’d never felt before. So,” she said. Though there was a lump in her throat, she swallowed and smiled. “Any more questions?”  
  
+  
  
She dialed his number tentatively, after the crew had gone and she’d hugged Ken goodbye. He picked up on the second ring.  
  
“Hello.”  
  
Her heart and stomach clung together as she said, “Hi, Jim.”  
  
He sighed on the other end. “Hey. How are you?”  
  
She slipped out to her small balcony, sliding the heavy door shut. “Good, good, I’m well. Hey – thanks for your email. Mine was today. Ken went relatively easy on me.”  
  
“Lucky. I got B.J…. and, that sounds awkward.”  
  
“Yeah.” She melted into her lounge chair. “So how is Philly?”  
  
“Great. Things are really good. How is San Francisco? Any recent earthquakes or threatening fogs?”  
  
She let out a short laugh. “It’s not very masculine to be afraid of fog. Does Jenn know about this?”  
  
“…let’s keep it quiet. Actually. Um. I have some news. Jenn’s pregnant.”  
  
For a split second, she thought about when she’d gone off birth control on purpose, and baby showers she’d been loath to attend, but once the second faded, she smiled widely. “That’s amazing! Congratulations!” And she meant it. She meant all of it.  
  
/end.

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to give Jenna Fischer her wish, of Jim and Pam not being soul mates but people to get them to their soul mates. Although I’m not sure I agree, it’s a really interesting principle. I was also paying tribute to a story Jenna told on NPR’s Fresh Air about filming “The Job”: essentially what made her tear up at the end of her talking head was the expression on Ken Kwapis’s face, and that seemed like an interesting relationship. Finally, in “Michael’s Birthday,” Pam talks about all that she’d want to do if she had a week left to live, and included in that list was travel to the Grand Canyon, Europe, South America and the Pacific Ocean. Mission accomplished, Pam.


End file.
